Popes and population

Irreverent thought for the day: I know leaders are different from the people they lead in many ways, but I can't help thinking that the guidelines of Catholic Popes (and especially the more recent ones, who have had opportunity to see the effects of overpopulation and unprotected sex) would have been much more practical  had they given up celibacy and bred like rabbits, in which case they would have discovered long ago that there are many situations where the "every soul is sacred" maxim - like most one-size-fits-all rules - is really not a good idea. (Personally I think it would have been more consistent had they preached what they practice (i.e. celibacy), but that would be going against the grain of human nature). 

Taboos and evolution

For a long time now, I have been trying to find out why things are the way they are. And for the most part, I look towards the theory of evolution for explanations. To me, virtually everything we do, want, aspire to can be explained as a survival mechanism, which I will define here as a genetic response to circumstances that existed in the past. Countless articles and books must have been written on this subject, but I have yet to find one that deals with the totality of human existence in this way. This little blog will not be the exception - it would probably require hundreds or even thousands of pages to cover everything that I would want to cover, but what I can do is offer some piecemeal observations, on isolated issues that have caught my attention, in the hope that this will inspire others to make a more concerted effort. And the reason I think this is worth doing is that I think that understanding the causes of our own behavior goes a long way towards solving some of the problems that we deal with every day. 

(For those of you who are wondering why our survival mechanisms - which are by definition solutions - can be problems, the answer is that circumstances change more quickly than and our genes or our behavior. Behavior that is completely appropriate in one situation may be completely inappropriate in another). 

For today, I want to offer some thoughts on taboos. Of late, it seems to me, taboos are being seen more and more as unwanted obstructions to our freedom, as throwbacks from more primitive, less civilized times. I do not disagree with this, but I am not in favor of simply jettisoning all taboos in favor of "rational behavior", for two reasons. Taboos, to me, are nature's system of "keep out" signs, and they were put there for a reason. We should think carefully before pulling them up and throwing them on the bonfire. And secondly, just because we would like to act differently doesn't mean that we can (see also a previous blog entry on life and death). Nonetheless, I do have problems with the "reptile brain" aspect of taboos, that is, the fact that our reactions are hard-wired, and I am quite content to try to dismantle that part. 

One taboo I am thinking about specifically is the one on ending life (murder, suicide, abortus). The gut reaction to this is rejection, which is perfectly logical if we accept the maxim that the main purpose of life is to "go forth and multiply". But of course overpopulation has made it necessary to rethink our attitudes on that. Even rationality itself could be seen as a survival mechanism, because it allows us to survive conditions that did not exist in the past, and notably the ones created by overpopulation. 

Life after death - the Second World War and the Baby Boom

For the past 200-odd years, the birth rate in Western industrialized countries has declined, in line with the slow change from a rural to an urban economy, the basic explanation being that large families are necessary and useful on the farm, but not in cities. If we generalize even further, one could say that birth rate declines as the population increases. 

If this explanation is correct, and I think it is, why was there are a Baby Boom? According to Marvin Harris, author of "America Now" (later republished as "Why Nothing Works"), the main cause was also economic (namely the opening up of new markets after the Second World War). I do not dispute that this will have had an effect, but I think that psychological motives were at least as important. 

To me, the gradual decline of the birth rate was a triumph of reason over instinct. The first goal of life in general is to have offspring. Nature does of course have mechanisms to counteract the effects of overpopulation, but as far as I know, only humans are in a position to not only predict the long term effects, but consciously and willingly do something about it. But when we do, we also create a tension between what our bodies were designed to do, and what our brains tell us is best for us in the longer term. 

Combine this idea with the well-know effect that danger has on our impulse to procreate (the link between eros and thanatos), and add a threshold effect, and you have the Baby Boom: after the well-publicized trauma of the Second World War, a lot of people, and presumably especially the victors, found it much harder to suppress the urge to celebrate their survival by having more children. And voila! like a dam breaking, instinct wins out over reason. 

Addendum: this may sound depressing - "how can we ever progress?", you might wonder - but that weighs less on my mind than the irritating suggestion that sheer willpower can overcome genetically encoded natural disposition. A key flaw in the otherwise very entertaining animation film Madagascar is when the zoo-raised lion, in the wild and almost overcome with hunger, succeeds in suppressing  his natural urge to eat his friend the zebra. Obviously, the film is really about humans, not animals, but it is still a ludicrous idea, as I have felt obliged to explain to my children.